Unfinished Story
by Unsatisfied83
Summary: One-shot, complete. This is a short piece that takes place just after the finale and sets up a more interesting future for Doc and Rebecca. Watch the finale again and pay attention to what they are NOT showing you.


Hi. I don't have much time to write like I want to so if someone wants to take this premise and run with it, please do so. Just do me a favor and be true to the characters.

I do not own anything that has anything to do with the show Alcatraz on FOX, although if I ever won the lottery I would definitely buy the show and make sure it got as many seasons as it needed to finish its story.

This is a short follow-up to the season finale as I thought it might have gone down. That hospital scene looked a little suspicious and I just have to wonder what they weren't showing us because there wasn't a clear timeline. Enjoy.

**Unfinished Story**

He stood, slumped against the wall opposite the doors leading to the OR. Hauser had shown up with Lucy shortly after Rebecca was admitted. All Doc got was a gruff "She'll be fine." before Hauser disappeared through the double doors leading to the operating room. Doc noticed a cooler in his hand as he breezed by and briefly wondered what it could be. Lucy approached him cautiously and took his hand in an attempt to soften the glare on his face.

"She should be fine." he heard, and that's when things got weird. Lucy had explained to him that Hauser brought blood for Rebecca and that it had silver in it. It came from one of the prisoners they captured and it was the same process that had cured her after her gunshot wound. He looked over to her at some point during this conversation but honestly couldn't come up with anything to say. She offered him a small smile of reassurance. When she left his side he returned to burning a hole through those double doors.

He stands there alone with an unreadable expression, his mind a whirlwind of questions from the previous hour. Hauser returns from the OR. Doc watches his exchange with Lucy, unable to focus on their conversation until he hears "As soon as she's stabilized," from Hauser. Doc watches their hushed exchange and runs those words through his mind. Hauser seemed confident Rebecca would be OK; it makes him feel a tiny bit better. Hauser decides to remove Lucy from the situation when Ray shows up and starts asking questions. Doc holds out the key as Hauser passes by the exit and gives it up without looking him in the eye. Hauser pauses and Doc looks up through squinted eyes.

"You can come if you want," Hauser explains, and anger boils up inside him. He supposes Hauser thinks he accomplished what he came here to do, but to just leave Rebecca here was more than he could bear.

"Whatever's behind that door isn't as important as…" Doc blinks away tears and shifts on the wall supporting him. "I'm staying."

Her eyes flash open. All she can hear is a rushing sound in her ears and a beeping somewhere in the distance. She can't breathe, can't move. She gasps in a breath with a strangled sound and sits straight up in bed. She still can't breathe. Trying desperately to inflate her lungs she sees something moving out of the corner of her eye.

"Rebecca!" Someone is coming at her from her left. She sees tubes in her arms, and she pulls at them suddenly, trying to break those restraints she imagines holding her in place. Someone grabs her arm. It was Doc. She gets a breath. But he shouldn't be here. They need to go.

"Hey! Hold on, you're OK," he exclaims as she tries again to remove the IVs in her hand and arm. He manages to grab ahold of her other wrist as he gently holds her hand far enough from her arm to stop her from her progress.

"No! It burns, take them out! We have to go!" she desperately tries to explain as she wonders why her voice seemed so far away. Her breathing is becoming heavier and more erratic as Doc struggles to find the right words. He opts for calm. She struggles against him.

"You're at the hospital Rebecca, you just got out of surgery. You almost died OK, I need you to calm down. You're fine, you're OK now." He doesn't believe it himself though, and he thinks she can hear the tears welling up in his voice. She weakly fights against the strong hands holding onto her arms. "Rebecca, please…." He doesn't know what to do. She looks like she's having a panic attack and tears are streaming down her face. "Nurse!" he yells, and waits a moment, "I need a nurse!"

A tired looking nurse pokes her head in around the corner of the door and straightens immediately at the scene. "What's going on in here!" looking first at Rebecca and then at Doc. Rebecca, now exhausted, is unable to answer her but Doc speaks up while gently releasing one of Rebecca's wrists.

"Um…Ms. Madsen appears to be having a problem with her IV," he starts, "could you please remove it? It seems to be causing her some distress." He hopes he sounds like a perfectly sane person but the look on the nurse's face says otherwise. Rebecca is still crying and looks up at the nurse through red, bleary eyes.

"Of course," the nurse says suddenly in a skeptical voice, "let me check her vitals first." She moves in, nearly knocking Doc over in her irritation and leaves without another word after checking the monitors and removing Rebecca's IVs. Rebecca sits in the bed in a daze trying to make sense of her current situation. Doc moves up to her bedside again and takes her hand. She hasn't noticed.

"What happened?" she speaks, hesitation in her words. She can only see images of Tommy flashing in her mind, she can still feel the tightening in her chest, her foot on the gas as she chased him, the cold blade slicing her open, and the warm sickening feeling of losing everything. She can't remember anything after Tommy ran off. He had said something about her parents. She knows he would be coming back to get her if she had lived through that, and now Doc is in danger too if he was with her.

Doc looks at her for a moment, unsure of what to say. It had been the single most terrifying moment in his life to arrive into that scene where he found Rebecca. "I found you…," tears pricking at his eyes at the thought, "in the street…with a stab wound." He is having a hard time with the words, not wanting to scare Rebecca or start her crying again. "I got your phone and I called 911." He chokes. She looks up at him, he tries to smile, just because she was alive, but Rebecca thinks he looks worried.

"Does Uncle Ray know? Where is he? Did you tell him where I am?" she inquires suddenly.

Relieved at the change of subject Doc replies easily, "Oh yeah, he was here with me all night in the waiting room and the nurses said you were going to be sleeping for a while so he went over to your apartment to grab some of your things. I don't think he wanted to leave you here but I told him I wasn't going anywhere. I had one of the kids from the store bring some of my things over so I could stay with you."

"Oh. Thanks." She thinks for a minute, pondering the lapse in time. She'd been out longer than she thought. "Where's Tommy?" She must have sounded a little too hopeful because Doc's face falls and he doesn't say a word as he shakes his head.

"We didn't find him," he finally manages, "He did this to you right? Like on purpose? This wasn't just from the car accident?"

Rebecca's focus fades as she stares out into the hallway, "Yeah." was all she could come up with. He had really been hoping that wasn't going to be her answer. "We have to go," she explains, "we can't stay here." He looks at her incredulously.

"YOU have to stay here Rebecca," pulling his hand from hers and gripping the bedrail. "You almost died!" his voice trails off. He tries again. "I need you to stay here and get better. I don't care if that superhero blood makes you feel all better, you are not OK!" She gave him a curious look. _Crap._

"Superhero blood?" she inquires, wiping the last of the tears from her face. She did feel better than she thought she should, for being stabbed in the gut. She pushes on her stomach and makes a face.

"Rebecca!" Doc looks at her, horrified.

"What!" she counters. "I feel fine," she tries, somewhat unconvincingly. "What happened to me?" She thought she felt well enough to leave but was now intrigued about what he had said about her blood. "What are you talking about?" she demands quietly.

Shifting uncomfortably on his feet he knows someone has to tell her, eventually, he just hopes she won't be mad. She leans back on the pillows in her bed and waits, arching an eyebrow for emphasis.

Uncertain, Doc rushes through the explanation. "Hauser brought some blood here for you and it had silver in it, it's the same stuff that fixed Lucy. She didn't say whose it was though." He looks up at her face for her reaction. She seems mildly amused.

"Well Lucy seems fine," she says after a moment. "Aren't the doctors going to be suspicious if I just heal overnight? I really should be getting out of here before they suspect anything, make it look like I am being transferred to another hospital," she tries, doing her best to sound convincing.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Doc says slowly, aware of her intentions. "Can you just stay for like, 24 hours? There are two guards outside your door to make sure no one tries to get in here, I think you'll be safe."

She thinks for a moment. "Are you staying?" she asks him, suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of being alone. She shifts up a little straighter, concern flashing across her face at the thought that he might say no.

"Yeah, of course I will. I was going to stay here anyway, even before I knew you were trying to escape." He smiles at the thought that she felt more comfortable with him there. "I'm just going to be over there," he says, waving his arm to the sofa on the side of the room.

A small smile graces her features as she notices he had set up camp in her room. Rebecca stifles a yawn, "OK, thanks."

"You should get some sleep," he explains as she settles a little deeper into the pillows, "I know you're gonna try to go back to work or something when you get out of here." He gives her a smirk before settling in on the sofa to watch over her. She smiles at him before closing her eyes, content with the feeling that she hadn't lost anything.

She sleeps for a minute, or an hour, she can't tell. She awakes to find Doc working on something on the sofa. The lights had been dimmed but the table lamp was on. She watches him for a minute, he's chewing on his bottom lip in concentration.

"Whatcha workin on?" she asks suddenly. Doc looks up in surprise and drops his pencil.

"Huh? Wha..it's nothing…" he replies, quickly snapping the binder closed and placing it behind him, out of her view as he hurriedly gets up to go to her side. He tries to distract her, "How are you feeling?"

She makes that curious face at him again, "I'm fine..."

"Good, good, hey do you need anything? I can go get you things…" and then he realizes he would have to take his binder with him if he left because she would surely get out of bed to find out what is was, she kind of did whatever she wanted most of the time. He liked that about her actually, but sometimes it did get her in trouble. "Or I can get a nurse…," he continues.

Rebecca decides to mess with him. "What's in that binder?"

He takes a step back, trying to make sure she can't see it. "It's nothing,…just some drawings and stuff," he replies lightly.

She holds out her arm and concentrates on making a serious face, "Give it to me." He doesn't move for a second. She tries again. "Give it." He doesn't know what to do.

"Um…it's just comic book stuff…it's not finished," he explains while making a squishy face and shaking his head. He wishes someone would come through that door right now and distract her.

She has a wry smile when she exclaims "No! You wanted me to stay here and now I want you to read me your story." He lets out a defeated sigh.

"It's kind of an ongoing project," he explains, uncertain, as he returns to her bedside with his binder grasped firmly in his hand. He thinks for a moment as he stands at her side, unsure of how she might react to the latter part of this ongoing story. She grips one side of the binder quickly but doesn't force the movement, he still hasn't let go of it.

"Let me see," she coaxes softly. The expression on his face resembles fear but he can't resist those big beautiful blue eyes when she looks up at him expectantly. His hand releases its grip and she takes his work carefully into her lap. She opens to the first page and flips through a few before realizing all of this looks very familiar.

"This is us!" she says suddenly, upon seeing his rendition of their first meeting in his own comic book store.

"Yeah, I've been drawing our cases together, each one is going to be its own chapter…" he trails off as she carefully turns a few more pages. "This is amazing!" she murmurs, with the biggest smile on her face. It makes his heart swell.

He should have seen where this was going because she isn't actually reading the pages now, she is just trying to find what he had been working on while she slept. She stops turning pages suddenly, because she found what she was looking for. Her smile fades.

"Rebecca.…I don't know if you're ready for that yet." He pauses. She says nothing. He tries to take the binder back out of her hands before she starts crying again but she protests. She can't stop staring at the image of a flaming Dodge Charger and the empty spot where she was sure she should have been drawn, dying and alone.

It takes her a moment but she quietly manages "What is this?" as she points to the blank pages before the car crash.

He lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "I need you to fill in some of the details," he says quietly. "I wasn't sure what to put there." He chews his lip, he hates that this came up so soon but she is just so damn stubborn.

"Just make something up," she finally responds. "You should be able to get video footage of the chase from Hauser." She pauses to think. "I'm sorry," smiling half-heartedly as she looks up at him, "I can't really remember everything right now," and then she looks away. She knew he didn't want her to be upset. She remembers Tommy had said some hateful things to her but she didn't want to dwell on it here, in front of Doc. She turns the page she has been staring at and is surprised to see two full pages drawn in a hospital.

Doc can't read her expression as she studies his drawings trying to figure out what happened when she was unconscious. She sees the drawing of her lifeless body being infused with silver blood. She turns the page and almost laughs. "Wait a minute…" The final drawing has yet to be colored, but in it she appears to have turned into a superhero. A super hot superhero.

She looks up at Doc for an explanation. "This is me?" she questions him, obviously amused.

"Um, yeah…it's not done yet, but…I think you have super powers now so I thought it would be appropriate…you don't like it?"

She smiles at her image on the paper and reassuringly places her free hand over his hand on her bedrail. "If you think I have superpowers, why can't I leave?" she asks with a mock serious face, turning to look at Doc's frustrated expression. "This Rebecca," pointing to the drawing for emphasis, "got to leave the hospital."

She can't hold her serious face for long though and she twitches a smile at him. She leans back into her pillows. "Thank you for showing me this." A genuine smile warms her face. "I love it, I think you did a great job." She closes his binder carefully and hands it back to him. "We're still going to be a team though, right?" she asks thoughtfully, pointing to his binder.

He puffs himself up, like the superhero he wishes he could be for her. "Of course! Rebecca Madsen will always have her trusty sidekick Doc Soto by her side. Nothing in the world can change that." He had turned away for a moment to place his binder back on the sofa and notices when he comes back that she is drifting off to sleep again. He feels good to be able to say that, whether in a comic book or in a much less glamorous reality, his place in the world is by her side. "Sweet dreams," he says softly as he approaches her and brushes a strand of hair from her face. She smiles in her sleep. He will always be by her side.


End file.
